Last night was perfect in its execution: Cindy made a Mexican dish from chicken and avacados and black beans and yellow rice. Kate acted as target for the backyard mosquitoes and left Cindy and I to discuss the varities of our life, until I got Kate to change into walking clothes and we walked all the way from home to Wesley to South Sixth Street Extension to Maddox (the longest part of the journey)to Dauset and back home. It was quite a walk on foot but didn't take as long as I expected. However, as I said to Kate, we always seem to walk at a faster pace than we expect. Nevertheless, we came home and watched television for awhile until a Summer thunderstorm came through and dumped a goodly bit of rain and a lot of electricity on our heads all through the night (no reference to Welsh folk music intended). And they expect another round of storms this afternoon.
When I woke up this morning, I had slept fairly soundly due to the exercise and the rain. I took Tex out and the air was cool and wet. Tex didn't want to go out in the grass but he did. He acted a little confused as he seemed to look for a dry place to do his business. He was more than ready to go back in the house.
When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was shave two days growth off my face. Unlike a lot of men, I do like to shave. It seems like a semi-artistic endeavor, making something rough smooth. I particularly like to shave it so close that you can't feel a hint of stubble on your face. Usually that requires a new razor blade and a good dollop of shaving cream. I have heard a lot of men say that they don't like to shave. But you just don't see that many beards out there. Either we are not honest with ourselves or the workings of our minds require more activity than we let on.
When we say that we like something or don't like something, what does that mean? For instance, let's say that a man comes up to you and says he doesn't like to shave. Now add to that statement that this man is cleanly shaven at the time he says this to you. How do you interpret that? Just for the sake of argument, lets assume that this person is someone who doesn't have a fast growing beard so that he really doesn't need to shave very often.
Does this person tell you this because he really means that he doesn't like to shave? If so, why does he shave in the first place? Any man who really doesn't like to shave doesn't really have to shave. He could wear a beard if he wanted to. Would he dislike the beard more than the act of regular shaving? What would cause him to dislike wearing a beard?
Some people wouldn't want to wear a beard because it might have a connotation in modern culture which wouldn't appeal to them. They might be perceived as a radical or a mountain man, both images being rather different, but perhaps unappealing in their own ways. Wearing a beard requires a decision on the part of the wearer: do you trim it or not? You might look like some old-fashioned hillbilly if you didn't trim your beard, but the act of keeping a beard in trim might require more work on your part than shaving would.
The next thing to consider would be whether or not the person who says he doesn't like to shave was not speaking the truth to you. Some people might say that they don't like to shave because they have a foggy view of what they really like or dislike. They might actually like to shave; they just don't really acknowledge the pleasure they derive from it. They also might say this because it is a common comment to make in conversation. Do the majority of men dislike shaving to the extent that some men might say they don't like to shave to fit in or go along with the majority? If we performed an actual poll of men would we find that the majority truthfully don't like to shave? Or would we find that men just like to say they don't like to shave to show comaradery as a group?
Clarity in our understandings of ourselves is important. Clarity in our understandings of the likes and dislikes of others is nearly impossible. This is what makes communication so difficult. Shaving is just a small part of the whole.
My wife commented that this was quite a lot of writing about something banal. However, significance is quite often in the eye of the beholder and we tend to impart significance on things which we care about, no matter how insignificant they are to others. Indeed, how we feel about the insignificant matters in our life quite often reveals much about how we feel about the more important parts of our lives.
What we say and how we feel about shaving may seem very unimportant in the great scheme of things. However, six days ago my daughter tried to remove the hair on her legs before going to bed. In the resultant hour or two following this enterprise, you would have thought the world was coming to an end, as she had burned the skin on her legs in long red stripes with the depilatory. This accident caused her to stay home and miss a day of work at my office and required quite a bit of conversation about the necessity of shaving in general.
The key to this, of course, is not what happened or what actually was said between us that night and the following morning. And that is true even though the topic of shaving came up for several days afterward. No, perhaps the significance lies in how we can allow the most insignificant things to monopolize our thoughts for days because of the effect they have on us. Perhaps the significance lies in how much of our time is taken up with the insignificant. Our lives become the endless repetition of mindless tasks, which we learn as children and copy until the need for such tasks end with our ending. Oh,Happy Day!
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